“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat one before.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cooper,” she says in the tone of Miranda Priestly inThe Devil Wears Prada. Rom-coms, I told ya. “They’re my favorite food.”
“No, they aren’t. Your favorite food is a pizza.”
“That’s a meal,” she retorts, dipping two fries in this time.
“Kiwi.”
“I had a good one this morning,” Sutton exclaims, a smile trickling from her. “Did you know they are good for your digestive system? I have to eat them now because you know what they say. Hot girls have stomach issues.” She giggles at herself. “But, I love fries too.”
“That’s true.” I smile lightly.
“Spaghetti.” Sutton bites her bottom lip after blurting out my favorite meal. My head falls, eyes watching her fingers twiddle with the red and white straw. “At least it used to be. I guess I don’t know anymore.”
“Maybe if you spent less time hating me, you would,” I say, realizing when her face falls it came out sharper than I meant.
“I don’t…I don’t hate you.”
“You’ve been drinking.” I make up the excuse for her admittance.
“Does that matter?”
Now I feel guilty, because no, it doesn’t. I’ve been so messed up lately that even getting this attention from her helps ease the pressure building inside of me. It turns down the dial of the pressure cooker I’ve become. Invisible steam creeps out of me.
She doesn’t know she does that for me.
She doesn’t know that when I’m around her, even in the same room or house, not even talking with her, she makes me feel more alive than I have in years. Sutton allows me to be me—the guy who was out on the ice last week, the one I focused on being this week in my games—not the person others have concocted me to be.
“No,” I finally respond.
“Plus, drunk words, sober thoughts. Right?” Sutton steals a nugget from my container, already having inhaled all of hers.
“Anything else you wanna get off your chest then?” I egg on.
She purses her lips as if she’s thinking, curls spilling over her shoulders and fanning across my cloth seats. Sutton rolls her head, pressing the side into the head rest. “Nope.”
I offer her my final nugget, withholding the fries, and ask, “Where should we go now?”
“I don’t know,” Sutton says into the bag, digging for a napkin. Wiping her hands off when she finds one. “Where do you want to go?”
Anywhere you are. That’s what I want to say, but I bite my tongue.
“I can take you home,” I offer.
Please say no. Please say no. Please say no.
“I’m not ready to go home.” She pops up straight. “Maybe we just drive?”
We drive around for another twenty minutes. To nowhere, really. Laps around campus.
Finally, I start to head toward her apartment complex. I stop a few blocks away, pull my car over, and cut the engine.
Sutton unbuckles her seat belt and turns to face me. She pulls her legs up onto the seat and manages to sit crisscross, accidentally flashing me her underwear. I swallow harshly. Her milkshake is in one hand, the other is playing with the straw again.
I mimic her. Unbuckle and turn to face her, but only pull up my right leg to bend beneath me.
She looks like she wants to say something.
